These area schools improved state testing scores over time. Here’s how they did it.

Schools across Illinois are digging into the trends in students’ test scores from the last three years to see if what they’re doing is working.

Most in the metro-east have seen improvements over time.

For some schools, there were increases of 20 percent or more students meeting the state’s standards for what they should know compared to the first year they gave students the PARCC assessment.

It tests students’ skills in math and English language arts. The state decides that scores at a certain level in each subject mean children are prepared for the next grade level and what comes after high school for them — college or a career.

Statewide, only about 34 percent of students are scoring at that level. Half the schools in St. Clair, Madison, Monroe and Clinton counties were at or above that average performance level this year.

Assessments can show parents and teachers a snapshot of students’ knowledge. It’s one of the ways that schools measure students’ progress.

PARCC is a more challenging assessment by design.

It asks students to support their answers with information from something they read and show how they solved problems.

During the last three years, the most improved school in the four-county area was New Athens Elementary. It didn’t have the highest-scoring students in 2017, but almost 30 percent more New Athens students met the state’s standards.

The other Southern Illinois schools with the biggest improvements included:

▪  Alhambra Primary in Highland Unit 5, with 26 percent more proficient students.

▪  New Baden Elementary in Wesclin Unit 3, with 22 percent more proficient students.

▪  St. Jacob Elementary in Triad Unit 2, with 21 percent more proficient students.

▪  New Athens Junior High in New Athens Unit 60, with 21 percent more proficient students.

▪  Franklin Elementary in Belleville District 118, with 19 percent more proficient students.

These schools with the biggest gains say, in general, what helped them were their teachers’ approach to the new challenges of PARCC and giving students time to practice.

What works

Principal Jim Marlow said teachers in New Athens try to give students opportunities to practice for PARCC as often as they can.

They’ve increased the time they devote to math and English language arts each day. They ask students to support their answers with evidence and explain their reasoning during regular instruction, which is also what they’ll be asked to do when they take the PARCC test.

Third-grade students, in particular, are doing better over time, according to Marlow. That’s because, like other students at schools that have updated their curriculum in recent years, they’ve been exposed to the math and English material on PARCC since kindergarten.

New Athens Unit 60 is starting to incorporate technology at kindergarten, too, in an effort to help students prepare for PARCC’s online format.

St. Jacob Elementary has Chromebook laptops for students in second through fifth grades to use, thanks to its parent-teacher organization, Principal Jay Simpson said.

Principal Cindy Tolbert said keyboarding is a part of students’ instruction on a daily basis at Alhambra Primary.

For the students who need extra help, New Baden Elementary offers after-school study halls and provides transportation to get them home, according to Superintendent Jennifer Filyaw.

Principal Jon Boente said the Franklin Neighborhood Community Association in Belleville provides tutoring after school to more than 20 percent of the students at Franklin Elementary.

Every year, educators analyze the data they get about their students so they know what work still needs to be done.

Marlow said staff at New Athens Elementary, like many schools, try to answer several questions when they get results from the state: Who did well? Who didn’t? How do their scores for this year compare to how they did last year?

Teachers use the information to target the areas where individual students need to improve. “You don’t just open the book to chapter one without knowing your kids and knowing where they came from,” Marlow said.

Educators at different grade levels need to talk to each other for that to happen. A third-grade teacher’s students, for example, have already moved to a fourth-grade classroom with a new teacher when they see the results of the assessment.

That’s the nature of the type of assessment that PARCC is. It’s summative, which means it evaluates students’ knowledge once near the end of the school year.

With another type of assessment, formative, students would take a test multiple times during the school year, giving teachers feedback while they’re still teaching those students.

State Superintendent Tony Smith said, in the future, the goal is for educators in Illinois to get the results from PARCC earlier. The state would like to administer the test multiple times during the school year, he said, but there aren’t enough vetted test questions to do that yet.

There’s a review process built in to the test’s design. According to PARCC, educators at a variety of levels, including college faculty, have a say in whether test questions are accurate, unbiased and appropriate for the grade level before they’re incorporated.

Critiques of the test

Jim Rosborg, a retired Belleville District 118 superintendent, notes that students’ performance on the single state assessment they take every year can be influenced by the pressure they feel to do well.

“Many of these children, they panic on tests,” he said.

Boente said staff at Franklin Elementary step in when students struggle and want to give up.

“Every adult in the building makes it a point to form connections with the kids,” Boente said. “Yes, curriculum is important, but until you form a relationship with the student, they will not succeed.”

St. Jacob Elementary staff also try to create an encouraging environment for students, according to Simpson.

“The climate at St. Jacob Elementary is very positive, and that starts with the staff — all staff, not just teachers — and trickles down to the students,” Simpson said.

The goal with the switch to PARCC was to stop asking students to memorize facts and fill in test bubbles at the end of the school year. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers was created to start asking students to think critically.

It was part of a “new generation of tests” that rolled out in 11 states including Illinois by 2015.

Some educators have questioned whether the higher standards of PARCC are achievable for most students if about 34 percent of students statewide meet them on average.

Rosborg currently works at McKendree University as the director of the master’s in education program. If he would have seen the same percentages of passing students as a teacher, Rosborg said “I would have looked at my own test.”

Principal Marlow said he thinks students’ scores would improve if they could return to a paper and pencil format for the assessment.

Students in eighth-grade down to 8-year-olds have to take the test electronically if their school has the means. They’re asked to type, highlight text and scroll on a screen, which can be difficult for students who haven’t had practice, according to Marlow.

Another challenge for young students is staying focused for at least an hour, sometimes longer, to complete the test’s sections. That’s after PARCC already cut down the amount of time it takes to complete the test based on feedback after the first year of testing.

Shiloh District 85 Superintendent Dale Sauer said the transition from a two-part paper test in 2015 to one online test in 2017 contributed to the decline in student performance at Shiloh Elementary School. Almost 18 percent fewer students there met the state’s standards this year.

The school had been among the top five scoring schools in 2015. Sauer said that was “a particularly high scoring cohort group.”

The elementary school has just two grade levels, which Sauer said is a small sample size that can be affected by small shifts in enrollment and performance.

But he said it’s too early to say whether other factors, like the reduction of support staff or students who moved out of the district, contributed to the decrease. The district plans to continue analyzing the data over the next few months.

“We do not place the entire value of education on a single-point-in-time assessment,” he said. “Shiloh schools have always been very proud of the education that our students receive and more proud of the people they become.”

While educators have complaints about PARCC, there’s also concern that the state will change the assessment after schools have invested time and resources in new curriculum and as students are getting familiar with the format.

The number of states using PARCC in 2017 decreased to seven. Though Illinois still uses PARCC for students in third through eighth grades, it stopped using the assessment for its high school students in spring 2017.

Illinois’ vendor contract for the assessment is coming to an end, but State Superintendent Smith said officials have no intention of stopping PARCC.

“We’re all in with PARCC,” Smith said.

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "These area schools improved state testing scores over time. Here’s how they did it.."